In an article:
In a fast-changing
culture, can the GOP get in step with modern America?
in today’s Washington
Post, writers Philip Rucker and Robert Costa put some interesting bookends
on their article that illustrate the essential problem with reactionary
conservatism – an inability to see facts or recognize truth in the face of deeply-ingrained
bigotry.
The first example is Presidential candidate Mike Huckabee, at
a pizza parlor in Iowa. He’s set up by a
local Baptist pastor:
(From the article:)
“America going down the wrong roads morally. . . . God
decreed unchanging standards in Scripture, but society keeps changing — and
fast. . . . I saw a commercial this morning about a transgender show, and
everybody was praising it.”
Huckabee responded by declaring that the standard of
all truth is the Bible. Distorting the laws of nature, he said, is akin to
playing the piano without a tuning fork — or baking a cake without the proper
measurements of salt, flour and sugar. “You’re going to have a disaster on your
hands,” he said.
Huckabee, who has ministerial credentials himself, has
proven himself willfully blind to the biblical message of acceptance toward
transgender people. Readers of my blog
are familiar with Isaiah 56, Matthew 19:12 and Acts 8 – but apparently these don’t
appear in Mike Huckabee’s bible.
The problem with Huckabee and other riders in the Republican
presidential clown car who are striving to be just like him on LGBT issues, is
that their expressed and very un-Christian bigotry only fans the flames of
bigotry in their constituency.
The grass roots of conservative reactionaries are still a
part of the problem – and the article closes with this:
The night before in Osceola, Tawny Waske, 49, was
celebrating her eighth wedding anniversary with her husband, Tim, at Nana
Greer’s Family Table restaurant when Huckabee walked in to shake hands and
answer questions. She, too, fretted about cultural changes.
“It’s legalized here for gays [to marry], and we just
bite our lips,” Waske said. “As a Christian, we’re taught to love the sinner,
not the sin. But tolerance only goes so far.”
Waske brought up ABC’s prime-time special this spring
on Jenner’s gender transition.
“Is it him? Her? It? I don’t even know what to call
it,” she said. “You know, don’t shove this down my throat.”
Tawny’s blindness is typical. There she is, wearing a wedding ring, and
openly celebrating the anniversary of the celebration of her legally and
religiously sanctioned right to freely and frequently copulate with her husband
– after all, her marriage is all about breeder sex. If I had her attitude and projected it back
at her, I’d be disgusted by the fact that she flaunts a wedding ring and dares
to shove her dirty but legally/religiously sanctioned sex relationship down
everyone’s throat. I’ll bet there were
innocent children in that restaurant who should not have been exposed to any
knowledge of that relationship built on sweaty, grunting, baby-making copulation. Why, I’m sure people at other tables were
afraid that she and her husband were going to start “doing it” right in front
of everyone else! (Remember, those aren’t my thoughts and attitudes – I’m just
adopting her attitude and turning it back at her.)
She calls Caitlin Jenner an “it?” Really?
The sad thing is that Tawny Waske and her immoral ignorant
bigotry is typical of those whose exposure to LGBT people has moved transgender
people from oblivious invisibility to objects of derisive disgust. It is very difficult for me as a transgender
woman to understand Tawny’s uneducated ignorance. However, one can only hope
that she, whose ugly thoughts expose her as an un-Christian ignorant breeder
pig-creature bigot, can one day evolve into a decent human being. I have hope in the possibility that she might
learn something.
When an ignorant breeder sow like Tawny calls me an “it” it shows
that she is willing to treat me as less than human. (Okay, I really do think of
her as ignorant, and bigoted, but the farm animal references are only due to my
angry and disgusted reaction to being called an “it.” How dare she go there!)
When ignorant breeder sows like Tawny vote, we end up with elected
officials who are as ignorant and bigoted as they are (or pretend to be
ignorant and bigoted to get elected) – and laws that treat me, and people like
me, as less than human.
But I still harbor the hope that she can intellectually and
spiritually evolve to a point where she and people like her can become human
enough to be able to treat me as a human being.
I know I am not an “it.” And when Tawny can recognize me as
a human being, maybe I might be able to characterize her as something more than
the ugly animal she shows herself to be when she dehumanizes people like me.
What Tawny needs is an education. She seems to think that gays and trans people
are sinners, and that she has been taught to “hate the sin and not the sinner.”
One problem is her Christianist religion (It’s not really
Christian). Her evil religion feeds that
deeply-seated bigotry. Unless the
leaders of her religion change their tune, it will be that much more difficult
for Tawny to have the grounding to be able to understand the truth.
When religious and political “leaders” like Mike Huckabee,
who should know better, play to this audience and support its continued
bigotry, it only delays the day when Tawny and her ilk ever “get it.”
I thank the writers of this article for exposing the deeply-seated
sleaziness in the GOP leadership and base – now, what can we do about it? There are a few Republicans who are working
toward making it a kinder, gentler party – but the evil resistance is strong,
and possibly getting even stronger.
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